Channel 45 names news director

Channel 45 (WBFF) has taken a major step toward its first news operation, choosing a news director for the 10 o'clock program expected to debut in the spring of 1991.

Mark Pimentel will begin part-time work at the station next week, and full-time within a month as the Fox affiliate gears up for its planned nightly newscast, currently called "The News at Ten."

In the next few months, Pimentel will be responsible for developing the structure of the station's news department as well as hiring personnel and coming up with a budget.

Pimentel comes to Baltimore from Charleston, S.C., where he spent a year as news director at WCBD, the only station able to stay on the air during Hurricane Hugo last year.

Prior to that, he worked as executive producer at WSB in Atlanta and as line producer of the 11 p.m. broadcast at WBZ in Boston. In 1979, a year after he graduated from Marietta College in Ohio, he was involved in a start-up news operation at WKEF in Dayton, Ohio.